How to Backup Emails on USB Drive for Offline Reading

You can read emails from Gmail when you are offline by using its inbuilt offline feature. If the offline mode is enabled in Gmail, the browser (Chrome) backs up the emails including the attachments. Again, some email client like Outlook allows you to download all the emails from a POP3 enabled email account (e.g Gmail, Hotmail etc.). Once the download is complete, you can read them anytime from your computer without any internet connectivity.
The problem with both the offline feature of Gmail and the email clients is that there is no such option for portability. Also, the Outlook sounds like a heavier application when your concern is only reading the emails offline.
A utility, called as MailStore is the perfect solution for reading emails offline leaving the box. There is a portable version of MailStore for using it from USB drive. By making use of this feature you can backup emails on a USB drive and read them offline from any computer. It is free and you can use this tool with almost no configuration.

Configure the Application to Backup Emails on USB Drive

All you have to do is download the portable version of MailStore and extract it in a folder at your USB stick. Then launch the application and select your email account from where you want to archive your emails. You can backup all email accounts like Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook PST files, Microsoft Exchange and any service that supports either POP3 or IMAP.
The very first task is adding your email account. Click on the .exe file at your USB stick and click on ‘Archive E-mail’.

Make sure that you have enabled IMAP or POP3 option in your email account. Select the email service from the list.

Provide the email address and password. You can test the connectivity by clicking on the ‘Test’ button.

Once you are sure about the connectivity, click on ‘Next’.
Next, you can configure the backup options. If your email account has a large number of emails, you can choose to archive some selective folders/labels or skip the emails from a certain range of date.

Once done, click the ‘Finish’ button.
It will take some time to backup the emails from your account depending on the volume. That’s all.
You can copy the folder in any USB stick you wish and access your email without having any problem. You can also copy that folder into your Dropbox to access the mails of your account from anywhere without opening your email account.
This utility is not an email client. That’s why you cannot send or reply any email with it. Where this is a pretty useful way of traveling by keeping your emails into a USb drive, you can also keep your favorite software into your pocket! Learn how to install software on USB drive.